Carbon powder has been a useful medical material. The medical value of carbon powder depends on its high capability of adsorbing bacteria, serum, lymph, filth, and other kinds of substances excreted from wounded skin or tissue cells.
On the other hand, radon therapy has been applied to medical treatment of rheumatism, neuritis, hypertension, inflammation of blood vessel, angina pectoris, maladjustment of blood vessels and sequelae of paralyses. It is described in the literature that allergic diseases, skin diseases, geriatric diseases, chronic inflammations, climacteric disorders, arrested growth of genitals, and infantile paralysis can also be effectively treated by radon therapy. These effects of radon therapy are considered due to the moderate radioactivity of radon.
Radon is a rare gas which emanates from radium ore when it decays by radiation. Radon is soluble in water and has only a transient existence with its radioactivity of a half-life less than 4 days. This imparts to the radon, which has an affinity to lipoids, a mild therapeutical efficacy. On the other hand, radium is a heavy metal and has radioactivity of extremely long half-life. If taken into the human body, it will stay there and effect an undesirable overexposure to the body.
The biochemical actions of radon on the human body are as follows:
(1) anti-anaphylaxis effects,
(2) action on the endocrine system,
(3) action on the nerve center or on the hypophysis-adrenal system, affecting the purine metabolism,
(4) action on the circulatory system; particularly improvement of blood delivery of the heart, and a good effect on the hypertensive patient,
(5) action on the nerve system which has affinity to radon, thus softening pain, and
(6) action on the digestive organs, particularly on the empty stomach, animating the peristaltic motion of the stomach for a comparatively long time.
In therapeutical use, radon is usually isolated and filled into previously evacuated gold or glass capillary tubes, thus forming so-called "random tubes" or "seeds", which are applied to the situs of disease where alpha-rays from the radon will reach such situs. In some cases, the tubes may be previously filled with active carbon, on which the isolated radon is adsorbed.
Because radon is strongly adsorbed on solid radium surfaces, its isolation process is carried out usually in aqueous solution. This process, however, is very complicated and greatly increases the costs of radon tube preparation, thus making radon therapy very expensive in conjunction with the comparatively short half-life of radon, as mentioned above.
No idea has been proposed for therapeutical purposes to use carbon powder that is saturated with radon gas by directly exposing the carbon powder to radioactive radium ore.